


If at first you don't succeed...

by owlaholic68



Series: Try Again [1]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 2
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood and Violence, Deaf Character, Electrocution, Game Spoilers, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Loss of Limbs, Major Character Injury, Minor Character Death, Murder-Suicide, Nightmares, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-26
Updated: 2017-08-13
Packaged: 2018-12-07 10:37:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 19,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11621802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlaholic68/pseuds/owlaholic68
Summary: The Chosen One wishes for a second chance.Unfortunately, she gets her wish.





	1. Chapter 1

“Ride’s over, mutie.”

Carla rounds the corner at a sprint, barreling towards the front door, dodging plasma fire from Enclave soldiers behind her. A glance over her shoulder is her downfall.

Something snatches her with a massive hand and slams her into the ground. Most of her ribs snap with an agonizing _crack_ and the breath is knocked out of her lungs in a scream.

Dazed, she looks up, and up, and up, then her eyes slip shut. Carla weakly coughs and feels her body grow heavy and numb. This is the end, she realizes, consciousness fading. She hadn't even managed to get any of her people out. She failed. If only…

“Time to die.”

As a man – no, a monster – impales her limp form with a massive knife, she has one final thought.

If only she had a second chance...

* * *

Carla wakes up with a start. The Temple of Trials stands tall before her, its interior shady and cool in the summer heat.

She doesn’t believe it.

It was all a dream. Just a bad dream. A nightmare. An absolute terror, an excruciating year filled with loss and fear and pain and _death_.

She doesn’t realize she’s standing up, and almost falls over before her sense of balance restores itself. The Pipboy 2000 in her hand reads the time and day: July 25, 2241. 8:45 in the morning. The day of her test in the Temple.

The guard at the forest entrance looks alarmed when Carla bursts into relieved and joyful tears. She sinks to her knees in front of the Temple.

She’s _home_ and _safe_ and everyone’s _alive_.

A small voice in the back of her head wonders if the Enclave will still come. She dismisses it. It was just a bad dream; the village would not be attacked. She brushes away the bad memories (the _dream,_ she insists) and enters the Temple. Every move she makes, every step she takes, a sense of déjà vu follows. She's done this before. Or, at least she  _thinks_ she's done it. Odd for a dream to be so true to something she's never seen before. 

But in the end, she is victorious. She is the Chosen One.

Just in case, though, Carla doesn’t leave. She chalks it up to ‘bad feelings’ and ‘needing to strengthen the village’ and ‘the geckos have been restless this year’. Summer turns into fall, then into balmy winter. Spring comes and a pit of dread starts to form in her heart. The attack had happened (the _imaginary_ attack) on May 3rd. She had arrived just a little too late, on the morning of the 4th.

The day passes without incident. Carla spends from dawn to dusk watching the skies, but no vertibirds appear on the horizon to raze her home.

The month of May passes. Carla helps Hakunin tend his garden, teaches her nephew how to throw a spear. She kisses her mother goodnight every night before going to bed. She starts to forget her nightmare, lets it slip into the back of her mind to be forgotten.

June 15th is a cloudy day. As soon as she spots the helicopters on the southern horizon, it’s too late. She shouts a warning and leads their best warriors, even as she knows it’s a lost cause. Against metal and plasma weapons, spears and rags are nothing.

This time, it’s a lowly Enclave soldier who kills her. A shot burns through her chest and turns her into a pile of ash before she has a chance to feel the pain.

* * *

Carla wakes up, the Temple of Trials standing before her.

This time, she knows. She doesn’t understand yet, but she _knows._

This time, when she’s sobbing on the stone steps, it’s not from happiness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EDITED: June 19, 2018
> 
> In case it wasn't clear, I always assumed that the Enclave was able to find Arroyo so quickly because Carla was out and about doing quests and drawing attention to herself, kind of like in Fallout 1 with the mutants finding Vault 13 faster if you do more to draw attention to it.


	2. Chapter 2

Carla has a plan.

Step one: gather supplies to defend the village. Weapons, armor, stimpacks, anything that could give them a fighting chance.

Step two: return to Arroyo a few days before the attack and evacuate everyone to the mountains. The villagers would be reluctant to leave their homes, but with her influence as the Chosen One, she should be able to swing it.

Step three: fight off the Enclave until they learn to leave them alone.

Step four: rinse and repeat. Or in this case, die and repeat until she gets it right.

The next few months are a blur. Carla immediately leaves Arroyo without as much as a glance over her shoulder. She heads first to Klamath, trades Gecko skins for healing supplies. Vic’s empty store has a shotgun and some ammunition. She takes it; it’s better than nothing. Next come arduous visits to the Den and Redding. On foot, the journeys take long weeks under the searing wasteland sun. Carla raids every cavern and hoards every penny to save up for a set of metal armor and a set of grenades she can barely throw properly.

Late August, she’s trudging through the desert when she sees a hulking figure. She’s only seen that silhouette once, right before it flung her to the ground and killed her. Her throat dries up and her body freezes. Then the monster starts to turn towards her, and she ducks behind a large boulder. Carla crouches there, shaking, for what feels like hours, and forces herself to listen, a hand over her mouth to stifle her loud panicked breaths. Against the abomination’s brute strength, the poor wastelander never stood a chance.

Too soon, May arrives. Carla executes her plan, gets everyone out of the village. They protest, of course, but the threat of a large army from the South convinces the most stubborn. For a week, they dodge through caverns and canyons, away from the sound of helicopter blades and pounding feet. Then, their luck runs out.

“Surrender, savages, and you will not be harmed!” The Enclave sergeant booms. He’s standing with a large group of soldiers in front of her. Behind the exhausted group of villagers is another complement of troops. Two vertibirds sit on the cliff above them.

Carla hefts her spear. “Bullshit!” she shouts, and launches the spear with every ounce of anger and frustration she can muster.

The Sergeant falls with a gurgled scream, the shaft of the spear protruding from the eyehole in his armor. The rest of his forces stand shocked for a second, then raise their rifles in unison. The next few minutes are a rush of explosions, bullets, and the glowing eyes of Enclave power armor. She loses herself in the fury and chaos, blind to all around her.

Silence falls, thick and sudden. Carla looks up from a grenade she’s preparing and realizes she stands alone. Ten soldiers encircle her. Behind them lie heaps of corpses: her friends, her family.

“Fuck you,” Carla snarls, hands shaking as she pulls out the pin and drops the grenade at her feet.

* * *

Next time, Carla runs faster and barters more fiercely. She even gets as far as Modoc.

Scouring the Den for work to augment her meager but ever-growing funds, she finds the car. Even under the rust and wasteland grime, it’s the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen. Smitty, the mechanic and junkyard owner, finds her staring appreciatively, one hand on the sculpted hood. He offers to fix it up for her (for a hefty price, of course), but is missing several key components. Namely, a fuel cell controller. Even if she could find one, there’s no way she could save up enough to pay for it before May.

“Maybe another time,” she says, and walks away. Hopefully, there won’t be another time.

In October, a group of radscorpions ambushes her.

Her hands are slick with blood; her fingers slip off the smooth carapace of the radscorpion tail. Feeling the poison burn through her veins, choking her lungs, she tries with one final effort the pull the stinger out of her stomach, but fails. She smiles through the pain as her eyes flutter shut and her hands fall limp.

Maybe she can get that car next time.

* * *

Carla stops counting.

Of course, that’s a lie. She never stops keeping track of how many times. How many cycles she’s tried and failed. Each time she dies is a fresh punch in the gut, a new stab of disheartening agony. Mostly, she’s torn apart by the Enclave when May rolls around, but sometimes she doesn’t even make it that far.

She picks up a companion, this time. Sulik, an intimidating but kind tribal man who’s saddled with debt in Klamath. Carla strikes a bargain and gets him out for half the woman’s asking price. Her goal this time (the twelfth cycle, but she’s _not counting_ ) is to investigate Vault City. Rumor was that they had used a GECK to build their city. Maybe they had another one. There was even a faint chance they could offer some protection against the ever-present threat of May.

Vault City is nothing like what she expected. The outskirts of the city are a slum of poor wastelanders living in squalor. She manages to get in the city by virtue of her antique vault suit and with a missive to go meet the First Citizen. Sulik waits outside. Carla walks through the streets with every citizen's eyes on her, and she feels alone. 

First Citizen Joanne Lynette defies all expectation. Carla was expecting a benevolent but strict leader. But no one could expect Lynette: a cruel, dismissive woman. And as Carla would learn, ruthless. She walks away from Vault City with an uneasy stomach and a mission: take care of the city of Gecko. The nearby settlement had partially restored a nuclear power plant, but the resulting radioactive waste was poisoning the Vault City water supply.

She’s never seen a ghoul before; the poor doctor who greets her at the gate startles badly at her scream, then offers her a bashful smile. Sulik looks similarly unnerved, his hands clenching around his chipped sledgehammer. The doctor, Lenny, leads her to the town’s mayor, an even odder ghoul named Harold. Carla manages to tear her eyes away from the tree growing from his head to explain her quest.

“There’s a broken part,” Harold explains, voice ragged. “We need a new hydroelectric magnetosphere regulator. With that, the plant will stop pumping out radioactive coolant.”

“Where would I even get something like that?”

Harold looks uncertainly at Lenny, then back at her. “Vault City.”

Carla and Sulik stay the night with Lenny, who hasn’t taken his eyes off Carla’s tattered vault suit. In the morning, he mentions a junkyard on the northern edge of town. The junkyard is, as its name would imply, full of junk. Carla pokes her head into a general store, but the owner has nothing of interest. Next door is a garage with a Poseidon Energy sign. A ghoul wearing a pair of greasy overalls looks up from his work when she enters.

Though she doesn't expect an answer, she mentions the fuel cell controller. After all of these tortuous cycles, that beautiful car is still on her mind. His eyes light up in recognition, and he tells her he thinks he has one laying around.

“How much?” Carla asks. Even if she doesn’t have the money right now, it’s something she can save up for. That car would give her valuable time to search even farther for a solution to her problems.

“I don’t have much use for money,” the mechanic, Skeeter, looks thoughtful. “But we’re short on good parts here. I need a super repair kit. Get that for me, and I can give you the part for free.”

Inwardly, Carla sighs. She’ll have to keep an eye out for one. But first, the power plant.

 

Vault City has too many blank faces. They stare and glare at her as she walks by, from windows and doorways and in the middle of the street. Carla runs into a tall councilmember on her way to Lynette’s office. Senior Councilmember McClure nods and hums in agreement at her request for the required part, and quickly sends a note to the Amenities Office.

“Thank you, sir,” Carla gratefully shakes his hand. “Anywhere I could find a mechanic?” He points her in the direction of Valerie, the local repairwoman.

Valerie rubs the back of her head and regretfully informs her that no, she doesn’t have any super repair kits.

“But I could put one together if I had two tools. Oh yeah, and a wrench too.” Valerie gives her the specifics. On the way out of Vault City, Carla stops by the Amenities Office and picks up the hydroelectric magneto-whatever.

 

The deathclaw snatches her up with a monstrous claw and for a second, Carla sees the terrifying mask of the _other_ monster. She closes her eyes and waits for death, can already feel herself waking up in front of the Temple of Trials.

With a guttural roar, Sulik bashes the deathclaw in the side of the head with his sledgehammer. The monster drops Carla, who falls to the ground, landing on her shoulder with a curse. She rolls to her feet and draws her pistol, but is seconds too late. All she can do is watch.

Sulik grunts and stumbles backwards, two large gashes staining his torso red.

“No!” Carla screams and darts forward, firing uselessly at its tough hide. The deathclaw swipes a massive claw across Sulik’s neck.

He drops limply to the dirt, wide eyes glazing over, his unmoving fingers still curled around the handle of his weapon.

Then the deathclaw turns towards Carla, long snout open in a snarl. She raises her pistol and aims without thinking. Two bullets find their mark, embedding in both of its eyes. It roars, shaking her to the bones. She pulls the trigger again, but it clicks, her magazine empty.

With a hissed curse, she dodges backwards, out of the way of a claw. While the beast blindly swipes at her, she runs over and grabs Sulik’s sledgehammer. One roundhouse strike later, the deathclaw lies dead on the dusty ground.

Carla drops the weapon and collapses on her knees at Sulik’s side. Not again. Never again. She bows her head and lets tears fall for the first time in four cycles. She only brings bad luck wherever she goes, whoever she goes with. She can’t get even this one little thing right. How is she supposed to save Arroyo if she can’t even save one person?

 

Lenny is waiting for her at the gates of Gecko. His shy and hopeful smile falls when he sees her alone. And covered in blood. And dragging a weapon that he’s sure isn’t hers.

“A-are you injured? What h-happened?” he quickly inspects her for any sign of serious injury. She just shakes her head, mutters ‘deathclaw’ and heads straight for the entrance to the power plant.

Faced with the option of reprogramming a robot to install the part or doing it herself, she chooses to take responsibility and do it herself. And if she gets injured and irradiated along the way, she deserves it. This is her quest to pursue, and nobody else's. These will be her injuries, and hers alone. 

The power plant reactor is as good as new, but no good deed goes unpunished in Vault City. First Citizen Lynette apparently _miscommunicated_ and actually wanted Carla to just kill everyone in Gecko so that Vault City could claim the power source as their own. Thinking of Sulik’s heroic sacrifice and Lenny’s concerned face, and seeing no such concern or kindness here, Carla loses her cool for just a second and punches Lynette in her smug, condescending face. Then she takes down a few guards, too.

Dying with a collection of bullets in her chest and the bloodied, furious face of the First Citizen above her has been her favorite way to go out so far.

* * *

Carla, in a repetitive daze, mixes up two wires on the detonator for the chunk of explosives. She’s dead before she even makes it through the Temple of Trials.

On the same stone steps she’s woken up on countless times (fourteen times, but she’s _not_ counting), she doesn’t even cry anymore. She no longer screams curses at the heavens, no longer mourns people who are still alive.

She just opens her Pip-Boy and writes down her goals:

 

Stop the Enclave.

Save her village.

Find a way to end this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EDITED: June 19, 2018


	3. Chapter 3

Hakunin’s tent has always felt odd to Carla. Now, seated across from the eccentric shaman, she feels even more uncomfortable.

“You’ve always offered me solid, though sometimes incomprehensible, advice,” she starts. Hakunin nods and gestures for her to continue. “I’m just not sure what I should do.”

“Explain the cloud choking out your heart, child, and I will channel the spirits to help guide your path.” Hakunin takes a sip of some foul-smelling brew. Carla doubts it’s tea; more likely, it’s straight-up drugs.

“I’m going to sound crazy.” _Though I can’t sound any crazier than you. Fuck it._

Carla explains, to the best of her knowledge. Hakunin stays silent, nodding thoughtfully at some of the more unbelievable parts.

“You walk a troubled path, an endless one you must walk again and again. You say that we will be spirited away by metal dragonflies?”

It takes Carla a second to decipher that metaphor. “Yes. I’ve tried time and time again (seventeen times, _of course_ she counts) to stop them and save the village.”

“But that’s not what happened the very first time?”

“No?” Carla frowns. “I mean, yes, the Enclave did come and take everyone. But it didn’t end there. They took you southwest to an Oil Rig in the ocean. I,” she’s never spoken of her dilemma to anyone else, and the words are starting to stick in her throat at the thought of her first death. “I made it there, but security was so tight. I wasn’t able to get anyone out. The Elder suggested trying to blow up the reactor, but with everyone still in there,” she swallows hard, “I just couldn’t. I _couldn’t._ Then I got caught. So I tried to run, but…”

“There, there, child,” Hakunin puts a hand on her shoulder. “You tried your best. And it seems as if some spirit has given you the opportunity to try again. Let me tell you what I think.” He sits back and inhales the steam from his cup of probably-not-drugs.

“There are some things in life you just can’t change, no matter how you try. If the fates really did give you this chance to fix your mistakes, it seems as if our untimely kidnapping was not what you’re supposed to worry about. After all, you can still save us afterwards, right?”

Carla avoids his eyes. “Of course. I even know how to do it.” She forces a smile. _Hakunin’s never made it. He died the first time, and he’ll die every time._ “So you’re saying I should just let them come, and focus on trying to rescue everyone instead?”

Hakunin nods and smiles gently at her. “Yes. If the spirits let you get that far in the first place, that is the path they wish you to take.”

She sees the sense (for once) of what he says. But to just give up on saving the village… _I’m not sure I can do that. I’d be abandoning them, knowing full well what would happen. And not everyone makes it alive._ The weight of the last seventeen cycles weighs heavy on her young shoulders. _It’s not like anything I’ve done has helped, though. Maybe he’s right. I’ll try a few more times to find a way to stop the Enclave, then I’ll just have to…give up._

“Thank you, Hakunin.” Carla hugs him before she heads off under the hot wasteland sun.

* * *

_Smiley the Trapper must have been a nutjob to get past all these geckos._ Carla frowns and peers around a corner of the cave. The Toxic Caves, just outside of Klamath, are far more perilous than she had anticipated. Around the corner, three fire geckos sniff at a pile of bones. Silently, as slowly as she can, Carla unhooks a grenade from her belt.

All three geckos turn at the soft _plink_ of the grenade hitting the cavern floor. One spots her and hisses. Carla steps back as the grenade explodes.

The good news: it eliminates all three lizards.

The bad news: apparently these caves were not only toxic, but unstable as _fuck_.

The walls around her start to shake and crumble. Carla scrambles to her feet, but doesn’t make it very far. A heavy beam hits her back; she hits the ground hard, breath knocked out of her lungs in a dusty gasp.

“Help!” she shouts, in the vain hopes that someone, _anyone_ , will hear her. Her arms are pinned down too. As she wiggles and struggles to escape, the rusting machinery next to her creaks and groans.

Carla barely has time to think _grenades fucking suck_ before a steel crane crushes her skull.

* * *

She finds a pair of pliers in Smitty’s locker. The Den is still lively at this time of night, people standing outside of Becky’s Bar and laughing loudly. But the junkyard is still and quiet, so she pockets the tool without problem. There’s a nugget of guilt in her stomach at the theft, but it _is_ just a pair of pliers. Smitty won’t even miss them.

The screwdriver, surprisingly, she finds on a shelf in Skeeter’s workshop. She’s still trekking out to Gecko to fix their reactor; despite the hostile reaction from Vault City, it feels like the right thing to do. Lenny is sitting on a countertop while she pokes around, regaling her with some pre-war story she’s heard five times already. But she nods and hums in all the right places, even asking a few questions out of habit.

“Hey, Skeeter, you mind if I borrow this?” she calls out to the ghoul tinkering in the adjacent room. He only briefly looks up at the tool before grunting in affirmation and returning to his work.

Two tools. Now to find a wrench.

The Vault City slums are, well, just that- a slum. Disheartened farmers and out-of-luck laborers mingle in the local bar, drowning their misfortunes in the best moonshine the wasteland has to offer. As Carla nears the door, intent on asking the bartender for information, a small child catches her eye. He’s sitting by the corner of the building and quietly crying. Carla looks around, desperate for a responsible adult and parent to help. But no one seems to take notice of the child.

“Hello,” she kneels down in front of him. “What’s wrong?”

He sniffs. “I lost my doll. Mr. Nixon was my best friend and he promised he’d stay with me forever and ever. But he’s a big fat liar!”

Carla inwardly sighs. Of all the things she was expecting to do this cycle, helping a kid find his lost doll was not one of them. But why not? She’s done enough bad the last few months, might as well try to do some good.

“Come on, then,” she adopts a gentle tone and holds out her hand. “Let’s go find him. I bet he just got lost.” The little boy takes her hand. She leads him around the side of the bar. “Did he get lost around here?” He nods. So Carla spends an entire five minutes looking for the toy before finding it in a dark corner, half-covered by rocks.

“Thank you so much, ma’am!” The child is, as expected, delighted. He hugs the doll close and peers into its beady eyes. “I thought you were just a big fat liar. But you’re my bestest friend! Listen,” he leans in real close to it, “I won’t tell Mom you got lost, if you don’t tell her I took one of Dad’s wrenches and hid it behind some rocks over there! Okay!” he runs off into a house.

Carla runs over to the nearby pile of rocks and hastily uncovers a dusty wrench. She slips it into her pocket and fast-walks to the gate of downtown Vault City. It’s almost sundown; if she wants to give Valerie the tools, she’s going to have to book it as fast as she can to her office.

After giving the grumpy mechanic the tools, Carla stays overnight in a grimy tent. Bright and early the next morning, she gets back into the city and collects the super repair kit.

Skeeter is overjoyed when she unveils her find.

“I’ll go get that part you needed, right away!” he scurries off to the garage, leaving Carla alone with Lenny, her ever-present companion in Gecko. The skinny ghoul opens his mouth to say something, but is interrupted by Skeeter, who flies back into the room and drops a fist-sized gadget into her open hands.

 

 

The sun is setting, deepening Lenny’s gaunt face even further. They’re sitting in his room: him on the bed, her on a mattress on the floor. It’s an unspoken agreement now, one that Carla has lived time and time again. She happens to be in Gecko for the night, Lenny lets her crash on his floor. But this time, he speaks up, startling her from the repetitive monotony she’s fallen into. During the last six cycles she’s visited Gecko, they’ve never had this conversation.

“You r-remind me of them s-so much.”

Carla looks up from her magazine. “Of who?”

Lenny looks lost in thought. “The Vault Dweller. They c-came to Necropolis one day – that’s w-where I used to live, before it w-was overrun with Super Mutants – and fixed our w-water pump. Saved the w-whole town.” He stares into the distance, looking his age for once. “I wanted s-so badly to go with them, but I never w-worked up the courage to even ask. I w-wish,” he chuckles, “if I c-could do it all over again, I w-would take a chance and at least _try_. But s-second chances don’t c-come easy these days.”

“No.” Tears well up in her eyes; she blinks them away. “They really don’t.”

Lenny notices her distress and starts to say something.

“Come with me,” she blurts, the words ripping from her mouth without thinking. An image rises unbidden of the last time she travelled with anyone: Sulik, dead on the wasteland dirt.

“What? R-really?” Lenny sits back in surprise.

Carla almost hopes he’ll refuse. The idea of opening up to someone is like holding a knife over her own heart. It’s just a matter of time before she messes up, and now it’s not only her who’ll face the consequences. _I’ve lost so much. I’m not sure how much more I can take. But maybe I don’t have to do this alone any more. It’s not like it’s worked out all of the other times. And it if it all goes south this time, I’ll have learned my lesson._

Of course, he doesn’t refuse.

The next morning, when she heads out of Gecko for the long journey back to the Den, she’s not alone. Not anymore.

 

 

The first drive in the Highwayman is exhilarating and terrifying all at once. Lenny coaxes her through the motions of driving a car, but she still almost hits the junkyard gate a few times. For a few hours, they cruise in silence until they reach the outskirts of Redding.

It’s already December. Only five months left. Hakunin’s words echo in her head, a piece of advice she can’t seem to ignore. With that in mind, she doesn’t stop in Redding like normal, but continues south. She has half a mind to head for New Reno, but decides to breeze past it, leaving the twinkling lights of the vice-infested city far behind. She’d visited it once, the very first cycle, and had almost immediately turned around and left.

Now, the mountains turn into flat desert. The sun sets, and she keeps going. Lenny nods off, and she keeps going, still heading towards the south. She lets him sleep until the sun rises again. His eyes flicker open when she stops the car near a cave. She stretches out on the backseat while he takes watch.

For the first time in days, Carla sleeps soundly, even for a few hours.

 

 

“Oh m-my god,” Lenny’s alarmed face fades in and out of her blurry vision. Carla tries to sit up. “N-no, no!” He’s too late to stop her. She screams and collapses back on the dirt, her entire torso a fiery mass of pain. _I was so close to San Francisco. Guess I’ll have to try again next time. And I’ll know to keep an eye out for slavers. At least I had a good run. A new car and a new friend._

“Stimpacks?” she croaks. He shakes his head, tears welling up in his sunken and pale white eyes.

“C-Carla,” he gently lifts her onto his lap. “I’m a s-shit doctor, I c-can’t even s-s-save you, I c-can’t do _anything_ to h-help.”

“Hey,” she reaches up and puts a hand on his cheek, wincing despite herself. “Stomach wounds are pretty fatal without stimpacks. It’s not your fault.” Even speaking this much is shooting sparks of pain up her chest. Her hand falls to her lap; he grabs it and squeezes tightly.

“C-Carla, what am I going to d-do now?” Lenny is openly sobbing now, one hand holding hers, the other supporting the back of her head.

“Ha,” she chuckles. Laughing hurts. Talking hurts. Even breathing hurts. Soon, though, it will all be over. “Don’t worry about that.” Suddenly, guilt joins the other, more literal, daggers piercing her stomach. “Lenny,” her voice trails away, but she fights to keep her eyes open. _I have to know. I can’t die until I know._

“Hush,” he whispers. “I’m here.”

“If you had a second chance,” Carla coughs up some blood and knows her end is quickly approaching. “Would you still want to come with me? Even knowing that one of us could die?”

He stares at her, eyes wide and brimming over.

“Yes, a thousand t-times over, _yes._ ”

“Good,” her eyes slip shut.

_I’m sick of dying alone._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time: Carla was young and she needed the money, okay?


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: this one gets a little rough at the end. Specifically, a stronger suicide warning than normal.

San Francisco, Chinatown. Carla walks through the busy street, leaving the ornate arch behind. The Highwayman is parked under it, hood open as Vic, merchant and repairman, does some routine checks on the engine. Lenny is rummaging through the trunk and pulling out spare weapons and ammunition to sell.

The Brotherhood outpost is manned by only one man: Matthew. He fidgets under the hot midday sun, but stands to attention at her approach.

“Who are you?” he demands.

“My name is Carla. Luke at the NCR outpost recommended me to come here. He mentioned something about needing help finding something?” Carla has perfected her opening speech the last two times she’s been here. Polite and knowledgeable, but not _too_ all-knowing. It also allows her to skip Matthew’s long explanation of the Brotherhood’s activities.

“Yes,” he seems surprised, but no longer suspicious. _Excellent._ “I – There’s an Enclave base to the north. Here,” he reaches for her Pip-Boy. Carla allows him to input the coordinates on her map. “The Brotherhood is in dire need of plans for a Vertibird. Navarro, the base, should have a set. If you accept this mission, I can offer you exclusive use of Brotherhood equipment.”

“Alright, then.” Carla smiles. “I accept.”

 

 

Carla never realized how lucky she was during the first cycle. Not until she tried to go back to Navarro. First, the mostly-underground base was extremely difficult to find even if she had the right coordinates. Second, hostile Enclave patrols were constantly surveying the surrounding region. Third, any area that didn’t have Enclave soldiers was chock-full of monsters. Deathclaws, Wanamingos, giant fire geckos.

She shifts her heavy backpack higher on her shoulders. She’d left the Highwayman, Vic, and Lenny back in San Francisco. Now, clad in a set of leather armor and equipped with a brand-new powerfist, she’s almost to her destination.

“Halt! What are you doing here?” The gas station attendant has a rifle in his hand, tense and at the ready.

Carla sheepishly smiles. _Time to play the fool._ “Uh, have you ever heard of the Enclave? I-I’m sorry,” she scuffs her boot against the ground. “I was told to report to Navarro, but I got a little lost. Is this it?”

The man relaxes. “A new recruit, eh? Well, you’d better get down there right away. Head straight behind this building,” he points to a forest, “and you’ll be right there. The password is ‘Sheephead’.”

“Thank you,” Carla nods and heads in that direction. _This is way easier than trying to sneak through that minefield in the forest. I can’t believe that actually worked the first time._ The guards accept the password, and one advises her to get to the armory and suit up before talking to the drill sergeant.

Power armor is strange and constricting, but liberating in all the right ways. Carla steps into the suit and feels it close around her. For a second, there’s a flash of claustrophobia, a flicker of the same crushing feeling every time she dies, but it passes and she breathes easily again.

Navarro is a small base. Aboveground, there are several hangars and crew quarters. In the bunker are labs, the Base Commander’s office, and the armory. But the other time she’s visited, the very first time, she’d beelined for the Commander’s office to get the FOB. It was early July then; the FOB was the last piece she needed to power up the tanker. Now, in early April, this is more of a scouting mission in preparation for future visits.

Carla takes her time exploring the bunker this time. In power armor, no one bothers her.

There’s a small door labelled ‘Reactor – KEEP OUT’.

She glances down the empty hallway, then nudges the door open and slips inside. This room is devoid of personnel, lights dimmed. A large nuclear reactor sits in the middle of the room, a terminal in front of it.

This is the thirty-fifth cycle. Five cycles ago, she had made the hardest decision, one that she’s still unsure of, to give up on trying to prevent the Enclave from attacking Arroyo. But _this_ – this is the chance to strike them where it hurts. Maybe, just maybe, she could really do something right. Carla takes a small cube of plastic explosives from her bag. This could work.

Carla gives herself twenty minutes. She gets the FOB, shoves the vertibird plans in her bag, and sneaks out the back door. Once she’s clear of the minefield in the forest, she starts running, counting down in her head.

Five, four, three, two, one…

She’s far enough away from the explosion, out of the blast range, but a ripple of fiery heat still hits her back. She turns and looks back at the base in the distance, now a cloud of fire and smoke. A few more explosions follow, presumably from vertibird engines.

For the first time in years, Carla allows herself to feel hopeful.

 

 

The morning of May 4th, she’s leaving Klamath behind and heading west, as she’s done countless times. Lenny sits in the front seat, Vic in the back with a mangy mutt named Dogmeat they’d picked up in the wasteland. Her power armor- the Brotherhood of Steel set, not the Enclave one – is neatly packed in the trunk.

Carla squints at the horizon. _Is there more smoke this time?_ Right on cue, Lenny perks up and points at the hazy cloud.

“W-what’s that?” he sounds worried, as always. Vic leans over to look at it, and frowns. Carla sighs. _I guess even blowing up their brand-new base didn’t stop them._

There _is_ more smoke than usual.

There are more corpses than usual, too.

She’s seen this scene dozens of times. She can list every dead family member, every childhood friend lying in a pool of their own blood. Normally, there’s only a handful. A few warriors, a couple sick elders. Hakunin.

Now, she sees her mother, the village Elder, cradling her youngest cousin, their necks twisted at an unnatural angle. Her nephew, his wife, her aunts, lie in a heap. _No,_ _they made it. I **rescued** them. They’re not supposed to die here. _The rope bridge isn’t broken. She barely waits to test its safety before sprinting across to the other side.

Lenny and Vic stay silent on the other side, watching her as she forces her trembling legs to move.

“ _Mom_ ,” Carla kneels at her side, tears dripping onto the blood-soaked sand. “I thought I was doing _good_.” She bows her head, then stands and walks in a daze amongst the bodies and crushed tents. Hakunin’s tent is the only one still standing. Inside, he’s lying face-down on the dirt. Carefully, she rolls him over.

“Hakunin?” her voice cracks. She shakes him, but he doesn’t wake. “No!” she screams. “Wake up!” She shakes his limp body. “Tell me what to do!” _He’s supposed to tell me where the Enclave took everyone. But if they didn’t leave anyone alive to take…_

“C-Carla,” Lenny has crossed the bridge to join her, putting a light hand on her shoulder. “I’m s-so sorry.” She shrugs him off and says nothing, closing the shaman’s eyes and standing up.

 _I did this._ She takes her 10mm pistol from its holster. _And now there’s nothing left for me._ She flicks off the safety and holds it to her head. _Time to start over. Again._ Carla shuts her eyes and curls her finger.

“Whoa, no!” Vic grabs her arm and tugs her arm away. “Stop, boss!”

“No!” She shouts, trying to pull her elbow away. “Let me do this!”

Lenny is sobbing, his fingers curled around hers, attempting to pull the pistol from her grasp. “C-Carla, please. I know this is aw-awful, but _please,_ d-don’t do this.”

Somehow, this breaks her heart more than everything else combined. They never could understand, never could know that everything was going to be _okay_. This was always going to be her fight, and hers alone. She shakes her head and smiles. In any other situation, they would be right. They would be doing _good._ Well, she had tried to do good too. _And look at where that got me_.

“C-Carla, Carla,” Lenny is softly repeating her name over and over again, prying her fingers away from the trigger one by one. Vic relaxes his grip on her elbow for just a second, but it’s all she needs. Her left hand shoots out and shoves Lenny away. Then she wrenches her arm out of Vic’s grasp and kicks him away.

“I’m sorry.” She doesn’t let herself hesitate, raising her pistol and firing. Vic, the ever-loyal repairman, collapses with a bullet between his eyes.

“W-what?” Lenny recoils, eyes wide. He tears his eyes from the corpse to stare at her. “What are you d-doing?” He asks, voice high and shaking. He takes one step back, then another, away from the gun barrel pointed right at him. “No, C-Carla, d-don’t-” His body lands with a thud next to Vic’s, glassy eyes staring into nothing.

“I’m so sorry,” she raises the gun to her own head, too numb to do more than gaze at her friends, slain by her own hand.

“It’ll be alright now. I promise.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me @ myself: wtf.


	5. Chapter 5

Cycle thirty-six, Carla travels alone.

An Enclave patrol ambushes her on the way back from a non-exploded Navarro.

* * *

Cycle forty, the Highwayman starts to make weird noises. Four days of non-stop driving, trying to rush to San Francisco, takes its toll.

“That doesn’t sound good,” Vic, in the passenger seat, leans his head out the window. “Maybe we should stop-”

The overheated engine explodes.

* * *

Cycle forty-two, Carla trips down an entire flight of stairs and is unconscious before she reaches the bottom.

Lenny works fast, but internal hemorrhaging works faster.

* * *

Cycle forty-five, she stops in New Reno for the first time. She slips her car keys into her pocket and her gloved hand into Lenny’s. Carla’s not sure what this city’s ghoul policy is, but best if she keeps him close.

Virgin Street only has two major “attractions”: the Cat’s Paw brothel and the Desperado casino. She passes them by, heading towards the large flashing sign.

NEW RENO

THE BIGGEST LITTLE CITY IN THE WORLD

Past the sign is a quieter street. Right in front of her is a building called the Jungle Gym. To her left is Golden Globes Cinema. A shifty-looking man is leaning against the wall of the Jungle Gym. As she gets closer, Carla notices a large jagged scar running down the side of his face.

“Sister,” he lazily straightens up, “I had my eye on you since you walked down the street. You know what I see?”

Carla sighs. “Sorry, not interest-”

“I see a pilot.” He ignores her. “I see someone who wants to FLY. You just need a little help, a little ‘Jet’.”

“Look, I’m not-”

“And my pilot friend,” he reaches out to put a hand on her shoulder. Carla steps back and considers breaking his wrist, but concludes that it would be too much trouble. “When it comes to Jet, Jagged Jimmy J’s your MAN. I got the best shit in New Reno,” he pulls out a small white and pink dispenser from his pocket, “pure Jet, straight Jet, the SAFEST Jet. You’d better believe it, sister.”

“Look, dude, I already said-”

“OTHER dealers, they don’t care about quality-”

“Shut the FUCK up!” Carla rubs her eyes and suppresses the urge to kill this man. “Just tell me where I can buy some weapons. I don’t want your shitty drugs.”

He deflates and gives her the directions to New Reno Arms.

“You’d be better off asking Jules on Virgin Street about directions and stuff,” he advises.

“Yes.” Carla is just glad to be done with this conversation. “I will make sure to do that next time.”

 

The sun is setting by the time she makes it back to Virgin Street. She gasps. Something in her heart cracks.

The car is gone.

A pair of skid marks are the only trace left. She follows them at a jog, almost towing Lenny along behind her.

“What the _hell_?” she mutters, clenching and unclenching her right hand. “They’re going to _pay_ for this…”

“Slow down, C-Carla,” Lenny squeezes her left hand. “You hafta c-calm down.” She doesn’t seem to hear him, staring straight down and ahead.

The tracks lead to a garage on the outskirts of New Reno. A sign out front says ‘CHOP SHOP’.

“Be c-careful, okay?” Lenny releases her hand and waits outside the door. She opens it and enters.

Three men stand around a car: _her_ car. She grits her teeth and approaches one, who looks up from his work and frowns confusedly at her.

“Who’s in charge here?” she demands, eyes steely. He grunts and points to a back room.

T-Ray the mechanic sits at a desk, shuffling through some papers.

“About that car out there,” Carla keeps her face and her hands relaxed.

“Yeah, what a beauty, isn’t she?” T-Ray beams and doesn’t notice her hands clench into fists.

Carla opens her mouth, then closes it. _I’ve got to think about my options here._

Option one: be smart. “I’d like to buy that car.”

Option two: be direct. “That’s my car, motherfucker.”

Option three: sound like a junkie. “That car is the only piece of happiness that has consistently sustained me through the forty-four times that I’ve gone back in time in a desperate attempt to change the fate of me and my village.”

Option four: kill everyone.

T-Ray is expectantly looking at her, eyebrow raised.

“Yes, it is.” Carla forces a smile and hopes it doesn’t look too much like a grimace. “Is it for sale?”

Five minutes of flexing her now-impressive bargaining skills, Carla walks away with a set of keys ( _now I’ve got an extra set, I guess?_ ) and $800 poorer. He had originally demanded $1000 for the car, and $500 for an upgrade, but she drives a hard bargain these days. T-Ray, amazed by her mercantile wit, threw in a package of Small Energy Cells for free.

 

March 15th, same cycle, Carla’s searching a cave for Vault 13, frowning at her Pip-Boy map.

“You s-sure this is the right c-cave?” Lenny trails behind her in a brand-new set of combat armor.

“Well, I _was_ ,” Carla holsters her pistol and turns around. “Let’s head out. We should have reached the entrance by now.”

They can see the mouth of the cave, the Highwayman’s headlights shining into it, cutting through the thick darkness.

Lenny suddenly stops. “Did you h-hear that?”

Carla stops too and pulls out her pistol. “No? I didn’t hear any-”

Something heavy lands on her back. She lands flat on her stomach, skidding slightly, her exposed forearms scraping on the rock. With a curse, she remembers her power armor, still packed in the trunk. Vault 13 wasn’t dangerous, so there was no reason to wear it into the cave.

“A centaur!” Lenny yells, raising his own gun to shoot at the monster. Carla twists her head as much as she can to see the massive abomination, with its human head and its canine one, snarl down at her.

Then there’s a searing pain in the back of her neck, teeth ripping through her spinal cord, and she wakes up in front of the Temple of Trials.

* * *

Cycle fifty, Carla sees a town on the horizon while trying to find a shortcut from Vault City to New Reno. She checks her Pip-Boy map and bites her lip. It’s not New Reno, but it’s not Redding either. And there’s no other settlements she knows of this far eastward.

“You know of any towns this way?” she peeks at Lenny out of the corner of her eye, taking care not to make him too nervous. _I always forget he doesn’t really know me yet. We’ve only been travelling together for, what, a few weeks at most? But I’ve known him for thirty-seven cycles (I need to **stop** counting). _

He fidgets and shrugs. “H-heard about a mining town, but thought that w-was just R-Redding.”

“Hm.” Carla turns towards the town. Even this far off, she can tell it’s mostly intact. As she pulls up to what looks like a town square and turns off the Highwayman, a smiling man in leather armor calls out to her.

“Hi there!”

“Uh, hi!” Carla gets out of the car and goes over to greet the man, Lenny following along behind her. “Where is this?”

The man’s eyebrows raise when he sees Lenny with her, but otherwise doesn’t react to the sight of a ghoul. “This is Broken Hills, a mining community. Welcome. My name is Steve, and I’m your guy. You want to know where’s where and what’s what in this fine town? Let me help you.”

“Uhh…” Carla scratches the back of her head. “Could you tell me about this town? I haven’t really heard of it before.”

“Well, partner, everyone’s welcome here.” Steve nods at Lenny. “Humans, ghouls, and super mutants live together peacefully here.”

“Super mutants?” her voice cracks. “Really?” _I’ve never actually met one before, but the things I’ve heard…_

Steve gives her a serious look. “Yes. In our eyes, everyone’s equal.”

“Well, this is already better than Vault City.” Carla forces herself to relax. _If they’ve lasted this long, it’s probably fine._ Steve chuckles at that. “So, who’s in charge around here?”

“That would be Sheriff Marcus, who also founded this town with a man named Jacob. We’ve all got a tidy agreement: The super mutants can handle the hard mine work, so they handle the town’s uranium mine. The ghouls help out at the processing plant, since the radiation doesn’t really affect them. And the humans trade the ore to nearby cities.”

“Where can I find the Sheriff?”

“Oh,” Steve thinks for a second. “He’s usually hanging out by the bank or the jail. You can’t miss him.” He pauses, as if to assess her reaction. “He’s a super mutant, just so you know.”

“Right.” Carla wonders if she’s about to die in the next five minutes. “Well, I didn’t get this far by being closed-minded. Why start now?”

 

Despite her concerns, imminent death does not await her. Sheriff Marcus is a gruff, friendly man (or mutant). While Lenny still seems anxious about being so close to so many super mutants, Carla immediately takes to him. There’s something reassuring about a sheriff that exudes confident authority, but is so humble.

“Missing people, huh?” Carla makes a note on her Pip-Boy. “I’ll keep a look out. You also mentioned something about a mine problem?”

Marcus directs her to Zaius, the foreman. He seems mildly annoyed, but quickly fills her in on the details of their problem when she mentions that Marcus sent her.

“The air purifier needs several new parts. And even if you had the parts, you’d need some kind of protective gear to survive with all the gas in there.”

_Another quest to find some incredibly specific item. Awesome._

“I think I can swing the protective gear,” Carla thinks of the power armor she can get in a few weeks, once (and _if_ ) she can get down to San Francisco and Navarro. “But please tell me you have _some_ idea of where to find the parts.”

“Actually, I do. To the west is a city called New Reno.”

Carla nods. _Yes! Not far, either. I could make it there by nightfall._

“Renesco the ‘Rocketman’ runs a shop there. He sometimes carries spare parts. Tell him I sent you, and also: ‘the canary kicked the bucket’. He might be able to help you.” Zaius reaches into a desk and pulls out a stack of bills and hands it to her.

250 dollars lie in her outstretched palm. “Whoa, no,” she hurriedly shoves them back into his gnarled hands. “I can’t take this. Don’t worry about payment or anything. I’ll do it for free, don’t worry about it!”

“Really? Okay…” Zaius seems to look at her with newfound respect.

 

The mine doesn’t get fixed during that cycle, nor do the missing people get found. Carla starts to worry that she’s getting too reckless, too secure in the knowledge that if she messes up, there’s always a second chance.

* * *

Cycle fifty-six, Carla steps into Broken Hills for the first time (again), wearing her power armor and carrying the small box containing a random collection of parts that Renesco had insisted would fix the purifier.

Zaius looks vaguely suspicious at her explanation of why she decided to spontaneously buy the parts, but Lenny backs her up by mentioning the Gecko power plant incident. She leaves her ghoul companion with the foreman, and enters the mine alone.

Amazingly, she walks back out in one piece, unharmed, and having handily installed the components. _First time’s a charm, I suppose. Or is supposed to be third time? Who knows?_

Zaius, despite her protests, presses a shotgun into her hands. “Me and the boys got this for you. It was a real kind thing you did for us, kid.”

The missing people are easy to find, once Carla stumbles upon a manhole cover behind some bushes. It leads down to a tunnel system, infested with only a few giant ants. With her power armor, they pose no problem.

In the dimly-lit tunnel, she quite literally stumbles upon the corpses. _No longer missing people. Just dead people now._

Grimly, she inspects the four bodies: two men, two women. One of the women has a note in her pocket that mentions an anti-mutant conspiracy in the town.

“We-we’d better show this to M-Marcus.”

“Hey, Len, wait,” Carla stands up from where she was kneeling amongst the corpses. “I know- I know you don’t feel that comfortable with super mutants and the like. But we could really use some help out there. I was thinking of asking Marcus to join us, if he wants. How,” suddenly, she’s nervous, “would you be alright with that?”

He looks at her, eyebrows raised, as if nobody had ever asked him if he was okay with anything. “Yeah, I g-guess I could get used t-to it. And he seems n-nice.”

 

To their surprise, Marcus agrees to join them.

One night, over a sparse campfire, they share stories. Lenny talks about Pre-War California, Marcus regales them with the story of how the Vault Dweller destroyed the Cathedral. Then, he turns to Carla, wrapped in a blanket between them.

“I’ve been meaning to ask,” he rumbles, “how old are you?”

“Nineteen,” she responds, pulling the edges of the blanket closer. _Am I, though?_ “I guess.”

The dark wasteland clouds, barely visible in the moonlight, press down around her. Her two friends are at her side, a warm meal in front of her, a set of armor and a gun behind her, a gorgeous car parked a few feet away.

“You _guess_?” Lenny scoots closer so he can see her face. “W-what does that m-mean?”

The safety, the kindness, the warmth and comfort, suddenly becomes too much. After years and decades of running, and worrying, and dying, it’s too much for her.

“I don’t know,” Carla’s voice is high. She sniffs and rubs her eyes on the scratchy blanket. “I don’t _feel_ nineteen.”

“Hey, it’s alright, kid.” Marcus awkwardly, too-gently, pats her on the shoulder. “You’ve been through a lot.”

 _You don’t know the half of it._ She sniffs again, feeling hot tears run down her cheeks. _It’s been over fifty cycles now. Considering all of the times I died early, that’s probably thirty years. I’m not nineteen anymore, I’m almost fifty years old._ She curls up, tucking her head down. _If- **when** I finally get it right, how old will I be? How can I even go back to living a normal life? _

Lenny puts an arm around her shoulder and says nothing. On the other side of her, Marcus sits solidly, a reminder of how _safe_ she is now. They both keep watch, long after Carla has cried herself to sleep, leaned against Marcus’ broad shoulder.

They keep watch until the sun rises, and then they get back on the road. Direction: Vault 13.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A chapter that doesn't end in death??? How?????


	6. Chapter 6

Carla side-eyes her new companion. Her group, the four of them, are walking on the San Francisco docks.

Lenny is at her right side as always, thin hand clasping her own. He always joins her early September, after she fixes Gecko’s power plant. Those early months are miserable and lonely without him.

Marcus lumbers along a few feet behind her. Out of habit, he stays close, but not _too_ close. The last member of their ensemble shuffles along to her left, body and face covered by a large brown cloak.

 _I’m just assembling a group of monsters now,_ Carla watches him from the corner of her eye. _A ghoul wasn’t too odd, a super mutant was pretty unusual, but a deathclaw? The years must be getting to me if I thought this was a good idea._

_I fit in well._

Goris, the friendly deathclaw, lived in Vault 13, studying its archives. Carla hadn’t been back to Vault 13 since the very first cycle, when she had left with the GECK and the NavComp parts without hardly saying a word to anyone there. Even if ‘Cycle 0 Carla’ had met Goris, she would have never allowed him to travel with her. Now, she’s a little older ( _technically still the same age_ ) and wiser ( _am I really?_ ), and a lot more open-minded.

Now, in San Francisco, Carla is nearing her goal. From what she remembers, the PMV Valdez needs three things to be able to take her to the Oil Rig: an Enclave FOB, some parts to repair the navigation computer, and fuel. It’s the end of May, cycle fifty-eight, and she has the first two. The first from Navarro, the second from Vault 13. But the third…

Fuel is a scarce commodity in post-apocalyptic America. Even before the war, as Lenny explained, it was expensive and hard to come by. It’s why the Highwayman uses fuel cells, why the Enclave uses nuclear power. There’s only one viable source for something that valuable: the Shi. Carla had visited their headquarters in Chinatown once. Their Steel Palace, with its endless hallways and quiet scientific labs, had seemed eerie and uncomfortable. But they had access to the fuel. And she needed it.

But the Shi wouldn’t give it to her, not without a price. So, Carla had found a solution. One of the vagrants of the PMV Valdez, a rambunctious man named Badger, had promised he could hack into the Shi’s systems and reroute the fuel. His only demand: rescue his girlfriend, an engineer who had braved the monster-infested hold to fix a serious mechanical issue. Even back then, it wasn’t an impossible task for her. And Badger had delivered on his promise, infiltrating the Shi’s computers and sending over the fuel.

There was only one problem: The Shi weren’t very happy about the theft. Their spies quickly rooted out the source of the hack, and when the Shi hold a grudge, they don’t let it go. By the time the tanker left the bay, Badger was dead.

 _I’m not sure what other options I have._ Carla stares up at the tanker and fidgets inside her power armor. _Maybe I can keep him alive this time. Leave San Francisco as soon as we get the fuel. The Shi won’t even have time to react._ She warms to the idea and enters the tanker. Badger is easy to find, and all too willing to discuss his missing girlfriend, Suze.

Carla expects the hold of the PMV Valdez to be dark, with most creatures asleep. However, unlike the first time she rescued Suze, it’s mid-afternoon, not midnight.

And the creatures are most certainly _not_ asleep.

She barely gets her bearings before something slaps her in the arm, sending her reeling to the side.

“W-What’s the h-hell is that?” Lenny scrambles off the ladder behind her and fires off a shot at the monster.

“I. Have.” Carla snaps into fight mode and lands punch after punch on this alien abomination’s head (at least, she thinks it’s the head). “No. FUCKING. Idea.”

The purple creature, almost twice as tall as her, staggers back under her hits, but gets right back up and runs at her.

Goris is suddenly next to her, cloak discarded on the floor, roaring and swiping at it. For a heart-stopping second, Carla doesn’t realize he’s on her side. Then Marcus joins the fray, pulling out his minigun and mowing down approaching enemies (or at least trying to).

“Hold down our exit!” Carla calls to the two of them and barrels past another purple alien monster. On the far side of the cargo hold, Suze the engineer is valiantly swinging a heavy wrench at a centaur’s canine face. But as Carla watches, she takes a hit to her stomach, and collapses on the ground, blood starting to pool under her.

“A-ah!” Lenny, still next to her ( _always_ next to her), dodges backwards. A floater nicks the front of his armor with its teeth.

Carla has a split-second moment to take stock of the rapidly deteriorating situation. Marcus and Goris are holding their own near the ladder, but just barely. Goris’ arm is bleeding, and Marcus looks low on ammunition for his minigun. Suze is dead; she failed her mission. Lenny is in danger, and so is she. Two more alien creatures flank them, the floater in front.

In those short seconds, a rough priority takes shape: protect what she has left.

The floater is still advancing on Lenny, who is frantically reloading his gun. Carla swings a heavy fist down on its head, hearing bones shatter under her Mega powerfist’s electrically-powered kick. It emits an otherworldly screech, then moves to snap at her. Distracted and outnumbered, an alien knocks her on her side. Carla skids across the floor almost five feet, her head bouncing off the metal grates.

Lenny hoarsely screams, just once. By the time she scrambles to her feet, power armor encumbering her more than helping, it’s too late.

“Oh my g-god,” she scoops him into her arms, wishing that time would freeze so she could just _save_ him. “Len, no, _no_!” She gently places his body on her shoulder in a fireman’s carry, trying to ignore the odd way his neck is tilted. _Stimpacks can’t help a snapped neck._

“We’ve got to get out of here!” she shouts to the others. She goes up the ladder first, still faster than the others, even with the…extra weight.

“What the hell?” Badger seems surprised to see her throw open the trapdoor and throw her heavy armored body up and out of the way of her two bloody companions. “What happened?” For a minute, Carla stays kneeling, taking Lenny’s limp corpse from her shoulder and cradling him close to her chest.

“I’m sorry, Badger,” she chokes out, glad that nothing else needs to be said. _It’s not supposed to hurt anymore. I thought it stopped hurting._ She stands up and trudges out of the tanker, Goris and Marcus silently following. They say nothing, trailing her down to the beach, the Golden Gate Bridge shining above them.

The sun is still high in the sky, glinting off the waves and the tarnished metal of the crumbling bridge. It would be a gorgeous sight, if the empty shell of her best friend wasn’t nestled in her arms.

“We were so close,” she reaches up and removes her helmet, setting it on the ground next to her. “We were almost there this time. I almost got it right. But now,” she takes a sharp breath and clasps his cold hand. “Now, I,” she stops, bows her head, and starts sobbing. _Now, what’s the point of going on?  What’s the point of succeeding if not everyone makes it?_

The sun sinks. Marcus builds a fire and Goris leaves her alone. Carla’s legs fell asleep hours ago, her arms cramping from the strain. Still, she sits, unmoving, the tears on her cheeks dried and leaving her feeling numb. _I’m not sure I’m doing this right anymore._

She thinks of everyone and everything she’s abandoned this cycle: Sulik, Vic, that missing kid in Modoc, that one Vault that the NCR had asked her to help, the entire city of New Reno. _I didn’t even try to help, because I thought I wasn’t going to make it this far. But I’m so close now, how do I know I won’t get lucky, and go all the way? I can’t do things by half anymore._ She sniffs and, knuckle by knuckle, forces her hand to let go of Lenny’s. _I have to live every cycle like I’m going to make it out in the end. Maybe not next time, or the time after. But soon._

_Soon._

 

Carla was right: she wouldn’t make it the next cycle, nor would she get lucky on the one following. Even cycle fifty-eight didn’t turn out right. Badger had told her he needed a few days to cope before hacking into the Shi’s network. But Carla was jittery and _wrong_ , tired of reaching for a hand that no longer was there.

Her hacking skills weren’t impressive, but her stealth skills were somehow worse.

Cycles fifty-nine and sixty were frustrating. She tried to do too much, was overwhelmed by trying to help everyone at once.

* * *

Ken Lee, right-hand man to the Shi Emperor himself, won’t give her the fuel. First, he needs the vertibird plans. That part is easy, since the Brotherhood of Steel simply copied the plans and let her keep the original. But there’s still one task left to complete before the Shi trusts her enough to give her access: eliminate their most notorious enemy, the leader of the Hubologists, the AHS-9.

If Carla hated the Steel Palace, she hated the Hubologist’s bunker even more. Men and women in long robes aimlessly wandered the halls, eyes blank. Some even patted her on the shoulder and _congratulated_ her, wishing her good luck in her path to otherworldly ascension.

“Stay close,” she whispered to Marcus. She had left Lenny and Goris upstairs, knowing that the bunker would be small and the passageways narrow. Having both a super mutant and a deathclaw in such close quarters would be a serious tactical error.

Carla cautiously picked her way through the winding corridors and endless mediation rooms until she reached the AHS-9’s office. The short and unassuming man stood up from his desk when they entered.

“Oh, a pair of new friends,” he warmly said, taking Carla’s power armor-covered hand and appreciatively stroking it. She snatches her hand away and, with her power fist, punches him square in the side of the head. _No time for fucking around. Either this is going to work, or it isn’t._

It doesn’t.

The AHS-9 _does_ instantly die, but not without guards rounding the corner of the hallway seconds later. There’s shouting, the loud _whirr-crackle-pew_ of Gauss rifles, and Carla realizes how bad this idea is. First, Marcus falls at her feet, a guard with a still-smoking rifle standing in front of them. Then, Carla joins him, and everything fades to black. As usual.

* * *

Cycle sixty-five, a Hubologist scientist offers to harden her power armor for a hefty price. Carla considers it, but doesn’t have the $10,000 he asks for.

 

Cycle sixty-six, a Shi scientist mentions how great it would be if he could get his hands on some hardened power armor. She puts the pieces together in her head, sees where they could fit, but ultimately drops it. She’s got other problems to worry about.

 

Cycle sixty-nine, she leaves Goris behind at Vault 13. She doesn’t rescue Vic, she doesn’t help out Broken Hills. When the end comes, she’s grateful.

* * *

Cycle seventy, she’s starting to wonder if she’s ever going to make it back to the Oil Rig. _How was it so easy last time?_ This time, she does everything possible. It’s perfect, the most flawless run she’s ever done. She attempts the most daring of rescue missions, follows up on every lead, and saves every child’s lost dog. She even finds a ‘cure’ for the addictive properties of Jet, letting the addict-infested town of Redding have a second chance at redemption.

She purchases an empty house in Broken Hills and leaves every companion there, save for Lenny and Marcus.

It’s all so precarious, so tiring. Carla doesn’t know the last time she’s slept in a real bed. She hasn’t taken her power armor off in weeks, even when sleeping. The end is drawing near, and she can’t stop thinking about it, endlessly planning and re-planning, hoarding spare ammunition and stimpacks.

Her efforts have not gone unnoticed. Every town she walks in, people recognize her and offer thanks and small tokens of gratitude.

Even the Shi know of her. When she asks Ken Lee for fuel this time, he doesn’t refuse.

“You are certainly a worthy recipient of our fuel,” he says, shaking her armored hand. “I believe I can trust you with our secrets.” He gives her the password to the Emperor, which is apparently just a computer, and gives her permission to redirect their fuel to wherever she needs it.

Suddenly, everything falls into place. She’s ready. Her friends have taken the Highwayman and departed for Broken Hills. She had kissed Lenny on the cheek before he left, had given Marcus a firm hug, and had promised that she would be home soon.

So, seventy cycles into her journey, the PMV Valdez finally sets sail again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One of my favorite things about Fallout 2 is how there are so many ways to do certain quests, like finding fuel for the tanker.
> 
> One of my least favorite things is those goddamn Wanamingos. 
> 
> Next chapter, Carla will have a *shocking* discovery...


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special warnings: death by electrocution, slight mention of vomiting, nightmares/night terrors

‘Déja vu’ means ‘already seen’ in French. Normally, when people describe having ‘déja vu’, it’s in a less literal sense. In this example, however, Carla _had_ already seen this. Years and years ago, she had stood on this same dimly-lit dock, staring into a dark doorway with fear climbing up her throat.

The entry hall of the Enclave Oil Rig is no more friendly, turrets surrounding her and only one open door shepherding her forwards. It’s all the same, but so different.

She’s wearing power armor. It’s Enclave armor, too, so that she’ll have a better chance of blending in.

She’s got someone (several someones, actually) waiting for her. That whole first year without friends, without support or anyone giving a damn about her, had left her tired and empty. Now, she’s even emotionally ready.

She’s so _old_ now. She’s smarter, faster, better. She can hit an inch-wide target with her .223 pistol, she can crush skulls like paper with her enhanced powerfist. She still can’t use a grenade without blowing herself up, but nobody’s perfect.

The entrance hall leads down to the Detention and Research level. With every stomp of her boots on the floor, her heart pounds louder. Every offhand glance from an Enclave soldier could be the prelude to being found out, to being chased back upstairs and into the waiting arms of Frank Horrigan. But nothing like that happens (again).

The villagers and vault dwellers are sitting dejectedly in their cells, heads down and huddled together. Carla walks past them as casually as she can, until she finds who she’s looking for.

“What do you want with us? Just leave us alone.” The village Elder, her mother, sits near the forcefield, arms wrapped around her knees. Carla surveys the hallway, but finds herself alone. She lifts her helmet up so her face can be seen, and lifts a finger to her lips.

“Stay calm, Mom,” she whispers, then puts her helmet back down.

“Chosen One? Carla?” The Elder’s eyes widen, and she puts a trembling hand over her mouth.

“Not much time, I have to break you guys out of here. Any idea on how I can do that?” Carla hears heavy footsteps down the hall.

“If you could find a way to get rid of the reactor, we could break ourselves out.”

“I’ll try my best,” Carla turns away from the cell as a guard comes around the corner. She confidently strides down the bleak corridors until she finds another flight of stairs. They lead into the dark. Carla takes a deep breath and goes down and down and forward.

 

The door in front of her leads into a small room, with three other doors on each of the three walls. Carla peeks in, arm tense and ready to strike. It’s empty, except for a computer terminal in the corner.

The terminal only has one button, unlabeled and red.

_Well, here goes nothing._

Carla hits the button. The door to the right slides open, as does the one behind her.

The door she entered through, however, slides shut. She goes into the room to her right. It too is empty, save for another terminal with another unlabeled button. Carla feels her body tense up in the heavy armor. _This is a trap._

She hits the button. The door to her left slides open and she hears another one shut somewhere. _Good, now I should try through the other room._ She walks back to the original one, then to the door that’s now open.

Two steps, three, four, and she’s halfway across the room when a jolt of electricity shoots up her leg.

“Ah!” the sound she makes is half gasp, half scream. She quickly moves her foot, but there’s no visible trap on the floor. _Besides the floor itself._ She jogs over the next terminal, and slams her fist down on the large button. One door opens, one door closes. Carla hesitates, for just a moment, and another shock hits her. Her leg spasms inside the metal casing of her armor, stray strands of hair around her face puffing up, sticking to the inside of her helmet.

Another room, another button. There are too many rooms, too many terminals. Her legs are starting to go numb from the constant pain. It’s getting harder and harder to keep moving, but she has to. She _has_ to keep moving, keep desperately reaching for each button, as if it would open a magical escape hatch.

Every room is blurring together, identical and offering no hope of escape. How long has she been trapped in here?

The next shock hits her mid-sprint, interrupting her mad dash to another room. Her sluggish arms are too slow to catch her, and she crashes face-first into the floor, her nose bashing against the inside of her helmet. _Get up!_ She screams, ragged breaths echoing in her ears. She chokes on the blood pouring down her face and in her lungs as she struggles to her feet, leaning on the doorframe. _Get going, you’ve made it **so** far!_

The next terminal is suddenly too close, and she almost trips over it, her hand falling limply on the button. The ground swims in front of her. One door closes. Carla doesn’t even see a door open, so she rushes back to one of the other rooms. The entrance room, maybe? She doesn’t know anymore, has stopped keeping track of where she is. She’s lost, just hitting buttons at random and hoping for the best. There must be dozens of identical rooms. How is she ever going to find the way out?

Her helmet is off, bouncing on the floor. _When did I take it off? Why? It wasn’t even helping me breathe. Maybe the air filters in my suit weren’t working._ She was losing air. But now it’s off, and she’s still panting and gasping, hands on her knees. _Maybe my lungs just aren’t working._ A bolt of electricity ripples up her legs and arms and chest and into her head.

Her teeth are clenched too tightly for her to scream.

The next button opens a door. She runs into the room, hits the button. A door closes. Carla stops thinking, starts pounding on a wall.

“Let me out!” she wails. _There has to be someone watching. There has to be someone that can help._ Her hands are bloody when they hit the unrelenting metal. “Please! Anybody! _Let me out_!”

A shock sends her to her knees. Her shoulder hits the door, her hand sliding down and leaving a long streak of red.

“Please,” she begs with her last breath, falling on her side as a jolt of electricity fries her brain.

* * *

The next cycle, it seems like she never stops shaking. But she still makes it. She pretends to ignore the sick déjà vu that has become her life until she opens that first door and sees that terminal and that button and those doors and the _floor_.

In the doorway, she drops to her knees, tears off her helmet and can’t stop herself from throwing up.

* * *

Cycle eighty, she’s still waking up in front of the Temple of Trials with a spasm.

This time, her random button-pushing yields something new. A new door opens, leading into a hallway with another door at the end. There are no shocks here, just quiet. Carla coughs up some blood in the inside of her helmet and shoves a stimpack in her chest. She’s not sure how much they can help with the internal damage, but it gives her a momentary relief.

This new room has a few lockers and footlockers. She rifles through them, pocketing a few items. _Hopefully I get a chance to use them._

* * *

Room A, as she’s started calling it, has a counterpart on the opposite side of this twisted maze: Room B. Cycle eighty-seven, she falls into it. It’s similar to Room A, with one major exception hanging on the wall in front of her: a map of the maze. It’s rough, but it shows nine rooms in a square formation, with two safe rooms on the side. Carla sees the entrance hallway on the top of the map, and another hallway marked ‘exit’ on the bottom.

It’s not much, but it’s a start. She’s already memorized the path to Room A, and thinks she can eventually figure out how to get to that exit door. It’ll just take some time.

A lot of time. She feels like she’s running out of time.

* * *

Marcus leans against the side of the Highwayman, legs stretched out in front of him. He pokes the small campfire with a stick. An ember crackles and shifts, sending a puff of smoke into the cloudy night sky. Marcus doesn’t know it, but it’s cycle ninety, early March.

Carla is stretched out under a blanket, her power armor sitting a few feet away. Lenny, though he doesn’t need as much sleep as a human, curls up against her side tonight. His slightly higher body heat (‘from the _radiation_ , C-Carla, I’m not s-sure you should be so c-close’) helps her sleep soundly.

She’s not sleeping soundly tonight, though.

First, she turns on her side. Her hand twitches against Lenny’s back. She makes a small noise and clenches her hand into a fist. Marcus ignores it: everyone gets nightmares. It’ll pass. This isn’t the first time his young companion (only nineteen years old, and so experienced) has been restless at night.

Carla twitches some more, muttering something under her breath. Lenny stirs, then falls back asleep. Marcus turns back to the fire, keeping an eye on the wasteland around them. Carla gasps and goes rigid.

“Five, six,” she mumbles, and her hand spasms again. “Two, three,” she whimpers and flinches.

“C-Carla?” Lenny wakes up and tries to grab her hand, to calm her down, to do _anything_. But she shakes him off and slams her hand into the dirt, over and over.

“It’ll pass,” Marcus crouches at her side and reaches across to pat the nervous ghoul on the shoulder. He doesn’t voice the ‘I hope’ that surfaces in his mind. She’s had nightmares before, but never this serious.

“One, six,” Carla’s getting louder and more incoherent. She coughs, freezes, then screams.

They both jump. The noise is sucked up by the flat expanse around them.

“Wake up!” Marcus yells, trembling a little now himself. He doesn’t want to think about what she could be dreaming about. It sounds likes she’s _dying_.

Carla doesn’t respond to their voices or their hands shaking her, still shouting numbers in a seemingly-random order.

“No, _no,_ that’s wrong!” She screams again, then her voice drops to a whisper. “It was one, _seven_ , not six, _fuck_!” Her voice trails away, and she sags against the ground. Then, with a sharp breath, she bolts upright and her eyes snap open.

“Carla?” Marcus rumbles, sitting back to give her some space. Carla looks up at him in confusion, then turns towards Lenny.

“What?” She croaks, staring at the wasteland, the car, her friends, in total disbelief.

“Are you o-okay?” Lenny rubs her hand. She stares at him, tears in her eyes, then reaches down to pull out her Pip-Boy. Its eerie green light pools in the deep bags under her eyes.

“It’s March,” she says in wonder, brow still furrowed in confusion. “March,” she repeats, then rubs her eyes and sniffs. Marcus wraps an arm around her shoulders and pulls her and Lenny close. Carla cries herself to sleep like that, still sitting upright with both of her friends close.

* * *

 _One, seven, eight,_ Carla groans and stumbles. She’s so close, has finally figured out the pattern. _Nine._ She hits the final button and leans heavily on the terminal.

“Come on,” she grits out between clenched teeth. In the next room, she can see a new door open to a dark hallway. “Keep going.” Her feet are so heavy, so numb, and it takes every ounce of energy she has left to move. “You’re going to make it this time.”

She doesn’t make it this time.

Cycle ninety-three, she dies with her fingers just brushing the final doorway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That electric floor maze is hard enough, but if you can't see it from a top-down perspective, how are you even supposed to know there is an exit? 
> 
> Carla's solution comes from this [guide.](https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Fallout_2/The_Enclave) She just numbered the rooms from 1 to 9 (top left to bottom right), with the two side rooms (A and B)
> 
> Almost there!


	8. Chapter 8

One time, long ago, Lenny had asked Carla when her birthday was. She had shifted and rubbed the edge of her ancient Pip-Boy.

“It’s on July 25th, 8:45 in the morning,” she answered. “That’s when I braved the Temple of Trials and became the Chosen One.” What she doesn’t say is that that’s the same day she had first set foot on the Enclave Oil Rig. Her first death, so many cycles ago, before her life had turned into a living nightmare, had been that morning, one year later, at 8:30.

She’s been nineteen years old for so long.

* * *

Cycle ninety-five, Carla coughs and stumbles out of the final room of the maze. She puts her hands on her knees and sucks in deep gasping breaths. After so many times dying in there, this hallway doesn’t even feel real. She jams a few stimpacks into her arm and continues.

There’s a staircase at the end that leads even further down into the Rig. This level, when she enters, is labelled ‘Presidential level’. As she walks through, she peeks into offices and conference rooms. One office is labeled ‘President Dick Richardson’.

Carla hums to herself and moves on. She’s got no reason to speak to him, so why should she take the chance of getting caught? In a corner near this office, she finds a stairwell that leads down. There’s a large yellow sign at the bottom that says:

REACTOR LEVEL. AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY

 _If you can blow up the reactor, the villagers and Vault Dwellers can escape._ Carla had brought along a small cube of plastic explosives for this very purpose. There are a few scientists and engineers in the reactor room, but they all ignore her, too wrapped up in their projects. _Now, if I could just not blow myself up for once, that would be great._ Thankfully, her experience with explosives has paid off, and she sets the detonator for a minute, stealthily plants the cube, and walks out of the room.

She’s halfway back across the Presidential level when an explosion rocks the floor under her. Then a shrill alarm starts blaring, warning of the impending reactor meltdown.

 _You can do this. You can do this._ Carla opens a now-unlocked door and jogs up a few flights of stairs. She fast-walks through a Barracks and storage area, until she comes upon an Enclave squad in a small room. A trooper with sergeant’s chevrons on his shoulder steps into her path.

“Halt! What are you doing here?”

“I,” Carla flounders for a second. Should she tell him the truth? “I don’t have time for your questions.”

He visibly tightens his grip on his rifle. “Well, you just better make time.”

Carla brushes past him. “I said I _don’t have time._ The reactor control computer is fried, we’re heading for a meltdown.” She opens the door into the entrance hall.

“Fine, then.” The Sergeant snaps. “Bet you won’t even last over the one-minute mark with that freak Horrigan. Good luck, mutie.”

 

 

This time, Frank Horrigan, Secret Service Agent and horribly deformed mutant, speaks to her.

“You’ve gotten a lot further than you should have, but then you haven’t met Frank Horrigan either.” He raises the minigun built into his left hand. “Your ride’s over, mutie. Time to die.”

“No.” Carla suddenly realizes how small she is in comparison to this hulking monster. This is the first time she’s been face-to-face with him: the first time, she’d only caught a glimpse, and since then she’s only seen him from afar.

“No?” Frank Horrigan seems almost amused.

“I’m not dying this time.” Carla raises her pistol and fires at his head. To her horror, he laughs it off.

Carla jumps to the side, just in time to avoid a flurry of bullets. She fires off a few more useless shots before she has to dodge again, this time behind a computer terminal in the corner of the room. The terminal screen is on, displaying a few lines of text.

COUNTER-INSURGENCY TURRET CONTROL

PRESIDENTIAL ACCESS CARD REQUIRED

She barely has time to process the words ( _if I could get that access card…)_ before Frank Horrigan is charging at her, throwing his empty gun to the side. She discards her pistol and raises her fists in front of her. She gets in a few good punches before it becomes obvious that she, in fact, _is_ going to die this time.

_I hate being wrong._

* * *

Mid-June, she falls limply into Marcus’ grasp.

_Dammnit, I was so close. Everything was going so well._

Carla’s eyes slip shut. Marcus’ strong arms encircle her and Lenny’s panicked yelling is the last thing that fills her ears as she drifts away.

And then she wakes up. And it’s this same long cycle, and she’s still there with her friends. She’s laying on an infirmary bed in a vaguely familiar room. Lenny is curled up in a chair next to her, Marcus sitting on the floor next to him. As she wakens, someone familiar walks in from an adjacent room.

Doctor Henry smiles tiredly at her and walks to her side. Carla realizes that she must be in the NCR capitol, not too far away from where they were attacked. Henry says something, but she doesn’t quite catch it. _My head feels fuzzy. I must have a concussion or something._

She tries to move, but her limbs feel sluggish. _Chems, probably._ _They probably had to use a Super Stimpack to speed up the healing process. The healing process of what?_ While her body is mostly numb, her left side does feel unusually light. Henry leans over her and looks in her eyes, then checks her pulse and breathing. He frowns and says something.

“What?” Carla says.

She doesn’t even hear her own voice. There’s a slight roaring her ears, but otherwise, all is silent.

“ _What_?” She repeats, alarmed. “I c-can’t,” she coughs, feeling the tightness of her lungs, but hearing nothing, “I can’t-can’t _hear_ ,” she’s shaking, her voice is probably shaking too. Henry’s eyes widen and he quickly goes to her side and checks in her ears and on the side of her head. Carla feels her breathing pick up. She can’t even hear _that._ Doctor Henry pulls away, runs a hand through his hair, and looks more serious than she’s ever seen him. There’s the smallest speck of pity in his eyes, and she hates it.

_I’ve never gotten any pity for all that I’ve gone through. Why start now, with this?_

Doctor Henry sighs, then picks something up from the bedside table and hands it to her. It’s her Pip-Boy. She reaches out with her left hand to take it from him.

It’s like a computer error, a small robot in the back of her head droning ‘ _error, error, no signal’_. Nothing happens. Then, as if her day couldn’t get any worse, Carla looks down at her arm and realizes why she feels so off-balance, and why she needed a Super Stimpack. Her entire left arm is covered in bandages, from her shoulder to just above her elbow.

And then the bandages stop. Because that _is_ her entire left arm now.

She can’t react. After all that’s happened to her, in all of these torturous cycles, she doesn’t even know how to respond. Should she scream? Cry? _Is this better or worse than dying?_ So she just blankly stares down at what’s left of her arm, until Doctor Henry presses her Pip-Boy into her right hand. He presses a series of buttons, then guides her bruised arm until the device is held out in front of her.

‘Carla, is this working?’ A new screen of the Pip-Boy has opened, displaying the words as Henry speaks them. She nods. ‘I’m sorry.’ She nods. _As if that means something._ ‘Your ghoul friend did well, but even the best technology couldn’t have saved your arm. He said,’ Henry stops speaking, and looks to the side. Carla follows his gaze and sees Lenny stirring at the sound of voices. ‘He said you were attacked, and that you saved his life.’

She nods. _As if I would let him die._

They had gotten unlucky. In the middle of the night, a stray Enclave patrol had seen the lights of the Highwayman. There were three of them, all heavily armed. One with a chainsaw, one with a plasma pistol, and one with a minigun. Caught unaware, Carla hadn’t been wearing her power armor. She had distracted the one with the minigun long enough to give Lenny a chance to take him out, but not long enough to avoid his fire. But she had pushed through the pain and, with her power fist, had darted up close to the one with the plasma pistol.

Off-balance for a reason she had been consciously repressing, she had missed her first hit. The soldier, seeing his chance, had punched her twice, once on each side of her head. Even dizzy, though, she was able to hit him back. Then, Marcus had finished him off.

‘C-Carla?’ Lenny is fully awake, standing next to her bed. He puts a hand on her shoulder. He hadn’t escaped the battle unscathed either. His right side is bandaged and his left arm is in a sling. ‘I’m so s-sorry, C-Carla…”

She can’t help but burst into hysterical laughter at the sight of the Pip-Boy trying to accurately transcribe his stutter. It’s bad to laugh, but she’s stopped even noticing his speech after so many cycles. Her shrieks of laughter turn into uncontrollable sobs after a minute, and she wraps her arm around Lenny’s waist and pulls him down to sit on the bed next to her. He’s crying too, burying his head in her shoulder.

When they’ve both calmed down, Doctor Henry does a full explanation of the extent of her injuries. He gives Lenny advice for changing the bandages on her arms, and half-heartedly says that her hearing loss might only be temporary. It’s not, though. And that’s okay, because she’s still alive. And while she lives, there’s still a chance. _Even when I die, though,_ she thinks, _there’s still a chance._

Weeks later, Carla is standing on the deck of the PMV Valdez, waving goodbye to her friends. Against all odds, she made it. Despite the thought that surfaces at night that if she just started over, she would have everything back, she’s still here.

 

 

‘Do I know you?’ President Dick Richardson frowns up at her. ‘What project are you assigned to?’ He curiously glances at the Pip-Boy in her hand.

“The lab sent me up to double-check the air filters for the upcoming ino-inoculation, sir.” Carla trips on the long word. It’s still difficult to pronounce unusual or longer words, especially if she never really used them in previous cycles.

‘Oh, good.’ The President seems to buy her lie. ‘Go ahead, soldier.’

 _All my research has really paid off,_ Carla muses while she stomps over to the back wall behind the President’s desk. A few cycles ago, she had skimmed through the lab reports of the FEV project. The staff of the Oil Rig would be inoculated against the serum in a few hours. It lent her the perfect cover story, and a way to get into the office without having to speak to the President.

She glances over her shoulder. The President is sitting at his desk, his back turned to her. Slowly, carefully, she approaches him.  _This is never going to work,_ Carla thinks, then punches him in the side of the head. He takes the hit and slumps forward on his desk.

_I hate being wrong._

She’s apparently honed her skills enough that a single punch kills a man. Carla waits a few seconds, staring intently at the two doors out of the office. _Did that make any noise? Was an alarm raised?_ No guards come bursting into the office, so she assumes that her attack must have been completely silent. She quickly rifles through the President’s pockets and pulls out a plain keycard.

_So far, so good._

 

 

The Enclave Sergeant steps into her path and demands something. This time, Carla knows that sirens are blaring, but hears nothing. _Oh, right, what was it he said? ‘Halt’ or something._ She quickly pulls out her Pip-Boy, ignoring the way the soldiers’ hands tighten around their rifles at the motion.

“Sorry,” she’s not sure if her words are coming out clearly. It’s been such a stressful, tiring day. “Can you repeat that?”

‘What are you doing here?’

Carla is too tired. She tells the truth. “I’m trying to get back to my people. Who are you?”

‘I’m Sergeant Granite. That _freak_ , Agent Horrigan, just stormed past here.’ The Sergeant points at the door behind him. ‘He’s waiting for someone to make a break for it.’

This time, with the words in front of her, Carla notices something odd in his wording. _A hint of disloyalty? Or just plain scared by Frank Horrigan, like a normal person?_

“I know, and he’s bad news. I’m going to have a hard time getting past him.” _Especially with only one arm and no hearing. I’ve only got five shots in my pistol, and I already used up one hit from my power fist._ She hadn’t had enough time to devise a way to reload her weapons with one hand, so everything she did in battle had to be perfect.

‘That’s the understatement of the year. I pity ya, pal, I really do.’

 _Yeah, and **that** is the understatement of the decade. You don’t know the half of it, buddy. _Carla wishes she could see his face or actually hear his voice. Does he sound sympathetic?

“Pity me?” her throat is sore, so maybe her voice cracks. “You should feel bad for yourself. Your reactor control computer is fried and you’re headed for a meltdown. You’re all dead men. Unless…”

‘Unless what?’ Granite’s helmet tilts to the side. The other soldiers nervously look at each other.

_Holy shit, is this actually going to work?_

“Unless you help me get past Horrigan to get to my ship.”

Sergeant Granite looks over at his group, then back at her.

‘Okay, okay.’ He nods. ‘I can’t talk for everyone, but we’ll do our best to help you put that freak Horrigan away for good.’ He visibly shivers. ‘I don’t wanna drown like no rat. How much time we got?’

Carla looks at the corner of her Pip-Boy display. It’s 8:36.

“Nine minutes.”

The Sergeant readies his rifle. ‘We’d better get going, then.’

 

 

Frank Horrigan says something to her, she thinks. But it doesn’t matter now. Carla walks across the relief on the floor that reads ‘ENCLAVE’ to the terminal in the corner. She pulls the Presidential keycard from a compartment in her armor and slides it in.

ACTIVATE COUNTER-INSURGENCY TURRETS

YES/NO

“Go fuck yourself!” Carla shouts at Frank Horrigan, and hits YES. She nods at Granite’s team, who raise their rifles in unison to aim at him.

The floor shakes from the vibration of all of the turrets in the room firing unrelentingly at Horrigan. Carla sees plasma fire flash. She raises her pistol with one shaking hand. _I only have five shots. I need to make them count._

Her first shot hits him in the side of his shoulder. _Not good enough._ She takes a deep breath in and holds it. Her second bullet hits him in the jaw of his helmet. The ringing in her ears is starting to give her a headache. Her wrist jerks from exhaustion and her third shot completely misses. She takes a second to let herself breathe. _I’m going to make it. I’m going to make it. I have to. I can’t do this anymore._

Frank Horrigan drops his minigun and holds his head, roaring so loudly she can feel it rattle her bones. Her fourth shot had met his mark, embedding in his left eye. Across the room, Granite gives her a thumbs-up. Out of the five members of his squad, only he and two others remain.

 _This could work. This might work. If this doesn’t, what will?_ Carla raises her pistol again to fire her very last shot and makes a wish.

_This is the end. If only…_

She closes her eyes and fires.

_If only I didn’t need a second chance anymore._

Frank Horrigan drops to his knees, blinded by her last shot. He coughs and his helmet moves back and forth. Carla belatedly realizes that he’s speaking, and hurriedly holsters her pistol and takes out her Pip-Boy. The time display in the corner reads 8:39. Six minutes left.

‘-seal your own death warrants. Duty,’ his entire torso separates from the rest of his body, blood pooling on the floor beneath him. Horrified, Carla takes a step back. ‘Honor…courage…Semper Fi….’ He fully collapses to the floor.

And just like that, it’s over. Secret Service Agent Frank Horrigan is dead.

In a daze, she sprints out onto the dock and onto the PMV Valdez. She’s greeted by ecstatic villagers and amazed vault dwellers. She signals to one of the tanker vagrants, who speaks into an interphone.

8:40, the doors to the dock close, and the tanker starts to move.

8:41, Carla climbs the stairs to the bridge. They clear the dock and the ship shudders and shakes at the sudden acceleration to full speed ahead.

8:42, the cranes and pillars of the Oil no longer loom above them. They’ve made it out of the underbelly of the station.

8:43, Carla takes off her helmet, her fingers trembling, and looks at the rising sun. _Was it worth it? I made it out, but I’m not **me** anymore. I lost so much. But that’s what I sacrificed for my second chance. For my happy ending. _She remembers Lenny, so long ago, cycle twenty-five, lamenting how second chances ‘don’t come easy’.

_They sure don’t. But it’s done now._

8:44, the Oil Rig is a distant speck on the horizon.

_No more second chances._

Cycle one hundred, 8:45 a.m., Carla watches the Oil Rig explode, and turns twenty years old.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A huge thanks to everyone who commented and messaged me (especially, you, The_Desert_Dancer). All that encouragement gave me the final push to actually finish this!
> 
> Hope you enjoyed the (surprisingly happyish?) ending!\
> 
> Now with an epilogue!


	9. Epilogue

Carla keeps counting days. It’s a habit she can’t seem to break, a sort of countdown. One day, it’ll all fall down around her. She’s sure.

At first, it’s fine. In fact, it’s more than that: it’s great. She leads the rescued villagers and lost Vault Dwellers to the ruins of Arroyo. The rebuilding of the village takes months, and she’s glad for the work. Anything to keep her in the routine she’s still clinging to.

Wake up before dawn. Get dressed, slowly. She has a few outfits that are easy to slip on with only one arm: a loose shift dress, a tanktop, a faded button-down shirt that’s missing half its buttons. She’s switched out her combat boots for pair of sandals. She opens the flap of her tent and steps out into the quiet village.

She itches to get on the road, go walking into the wasteland. Even taking a drive in the Highwayman would scratch that itch. But she won’t leave the village, so she runs laps around the perimeter instead, waving at the few people awake at this hour. Afterwards, she heads to the informal training area. A few targets are set up, spears discarded next to them. There’s a locker nearby with various firearms and ammunition. In the afternoon, she sometimes teaches the younger adults how to fire and maintain guns. It’s a little hard to teach someone how to use a rifle without being able to demonstrate, but it works out.

Carla sits on a wooden bench and pulls a length of fabric from her pocket. With her teeth, she wraps it around her hand. _Across my knuckles, then down to the wrist._ The sun is peeking above the hills. Someone in the village starts cooking breakfast, sending sweet-smelling smoke blowing her way. _Between the thumb and index finger, then down again. Around the thumb again. Across the knuckles again, just to be on the safe side._ Finally, she finishes wrapping her hand, tucking the final edge under. Carla stands up and slips her sandals off, then walks over to the training area’s newest addition.

She’d spent dozens of sleepless nights cutting canvas fabric, painstakingly sewing, and gathering stuffing. Marcus had helped her lift the heavy bag up, and Vic had tied it around a sturdy tree branch. Nobody else ever really used the punching bag, leaving her alone to enjoy it.

It lets her breathe. The exercise helps her feel her lungs burn, makes her focus on the _in and out, in and out_ when she steps back to take a second-long break. The rhythm keeps her going, keeps her mind blank, at least for an hour. She even gets a few kicks in, careful not to injure her feet.

She looks up and sees Lenny standing patiently a few feet away. He waves at her, she nods back. A ‘Good Morning’ of their own design. He waits while she stretches, then joins her on the bench while she unwraps her hand. When she’s done, he holds something out to her with an excited smile. It’s a small red fruit, mottled with patches of yellow and green.

Carla’s eyebrows raise, and she looks up at Lenny, a grin creeping on her face. _Is this…?_

He nods and presses it into her hand. _It is._ _Try it._

The GECK had included a large collection of seeds, all specially designed to survive and flourish in a post-apocalyptic desert. These plants were hardy and grew fast, producing large quantities of fruits and vegetables. They were even working on growing wheat and other grains. Lenny had taken a personal interest in the new crops, researching plant diseases and visiting the gardens in his spare time. One plant, a modified tomato variety, was the first to grow fruit. They had been waiting and watching for almost a week for it to ripen. And as their hero, everyone agreed that she should be the first to eat it.

She bites into the tomato. It’s savory and messy, and she has to wipe juice from her chin with the back of her hand. It’s the best thing she’s ever tasted, leagues above the tough tubers they were able to grow before, even better than the stale pre-war food she had scavenged. Her eyes flutter and she hums a little.

Lenny gives her two hesitant thumbs up, his mouth curved in a hopeful smile. _Good?_ She nods and smiles wide. _Amazing._ She scoots closer to him and hooks one ankle around his foot. _But you should try it too._ Then she (gently!) smashes the rest of the tomato into his mouth. His eyes widen and he almost chokes on the fruit, but he manages to properly chew it.

“C-Carla”, he breathlessly chuckles. She laughs too. It’s hard enough to learn to read lips, but with non-humans like Lenny (or Marcus, or Goris), it’s near-impossible. All the same, she recognizes the shape of her name clear enough.

After breakfast, she supervises the newest building project: a storehouse for their new crops. Having been banned from actually helping build ever since she almost dropped a bucket of nails on Sulik’s head, she pores over blueprints instead. After a light lunch, she trains some children in basic self-defense. For them, it’s more like a game, a contest of who can hold a handstand the longest, who can run the fastest, who can almost beat Carla in an arm-wrestling contest (sometimes, she even lets one of them win).

Sulik has to fetch her for dinner. She’s stretched out on the floor of her tent, cleaning her pistol with a still-slightly trembling hand. Goris is hunched over a makeshift table next to her, gingerly holding a pencil between his claws. For reasons she never explained, Carla had insisted that all of her companions stay in the same tent as her. They had shoved two larger tents together, cutting holes in the sides to create a rough doorway between them.

Sleeping arrangements were complicated, given the diversity of the group. But it worked. And having everyone in the same place, practically within reach? It was different than before. And right now, that’s all she needed.

* * *

A noise wakes Goris up. He stirs and raises his head from his warm nest. Carla is clipping her Pip-Boy to the waist of her sleeping pants and walking out the door. This on its own isn’t unusual. His young companion has a tendency to wake up in the middle of the night. What is odd, however, is that she runs right into the tent flap, as if she doesn’t even notice it’s there.

He sits up as she pushes it open and leaves their tent. Curious, he follows, making sure to drape his cloak over his shoulders. While most of the village had grown more or less accustomed to a deathclaw, the presence of the cloak helps reassure them.

Carla walks slowly but confidently, her bare feet padding on the soft dirt. She doesn’t look around, following an invisible path only she can see. Goris tries once to catch her attention. Even though her glassy eyes are open, she doesn’t seem to notice him. _Sleepwalking,_ he concludes. _I’d best keep an eye on her._

She walks out of the village into a dense forest. Goris notes a faint overgrown path that she follows until they emerge into a clearing. Carla looks up at the building for a few minutes, standing still, her hand on her hip. He thinks that she’s going to go inside, but she doesn’t. Then she jolts and her hand flies up to her mouth.

“No,” she gasps. Goris, standing several feet behind her, wishes she could hear his clawed feet as he walks over. Anything to snap her out of it faster. “No, this is a _dream_ ,” she repeats in a strangled voice, sinking to her knees on the crumbling stone steps.

“Carla?” Goris walks in front of her, but her eyes are tightly shut, tears leaking out of the corner of her eyelids. Her shoulders are shaking, her chest heaving.

“No, I did it,” she sobs. “Didn’t I? Didn’t I make it this time?” She shakes her head back and forth. “I thought it worked, I thought I was _done._ ”

Goris, desperate to snap her out of her panic, puts a claw on her shoulder.

Carla startles backwards and screams at the top of her lungs. She stares wide-eyed up at Goris, then her brow furrows in confusion.

“Sorry,” he sheepishly waves his claws. Carla looks almost relieved to not be able to hear him. She pulls out her Pip-Boy and fiddles with a few dials, her fingers trembling. Before she navigates to her speech-to-text function, though, she clicks through a different section. Whatever she reads there seems to calm her.

“Goris?” Carla sniffles, her voice choked-sounding. She glances above his shoulder to the building behind them, then refocuses on his face.

He doesn’t know what to say. _Are you okay?_ Of course she isn’t. _What happened to you?_ Lenny had already asked this one night after one her particularly terrifying-sounding nightmares. She had shrugged him off and insisted that nothing had happened.

“Let’s get back to the others,” he says, gently helping her to her feet. After a bad dream, she always walks around the tent and looks at everyone, as if to verify that they’re really all there. He doesn’t understand it, but he’s starting to.

* * *

July 25th, 2243. Carla sits alone on a hill, legs stretched out in front of her. Down in the rapidly-growing village, people are hunched over cooking fires, preparing for the night’s festivities. This year, they were inaugurating a new festival to celebrate their rescue from the Enclave.

And, of course, it was her birthday. Twenty-one years old. _I don’t feel twenty-one though._ One rough night, she’d sat and did the math, counted every cycle, every month. She doesn’t know if those years really count, but it sure feels like they do.

_Happy ninety-fifth birthday to me._

In one hand Carla holds her Pip-Boy. She skims over the notes, skips past the record she’d written of her current cycle ( _is it still a cycle if it’s all over now?_ ) and opens the file labelled ‘READ THIS’. She types in a few updates, then sits back and rereads the few lines.

YOU ARE IN ARROYO. YOU ARE SAFE.

YOU ARE TWENTY-ONE YEARS OLD. THE YEAR IS 2243.

YOU CAN’T HEAR ANYTHING. YOU LOST AN ARM. YOU CUT YOUR HAIR.

IT’S ALL OVER NOW. YOU DID IT.

* * *

‘Sorry, I don’t know. Maybe ask in the fields?’

‘The ghoul? I haven’t seen him today.’

‘Why are you asking me? Isn’t he usually with you?’

Carla bursts into their new adobe house. She looks around, eyes wide in panic, and ducks her head into every room. Vic looks up from a book he’s reading in the living room.

“Lenny,” she mutters, breathless, eyes skittering everywhere. “Where’s Lenny?”

“Boss,” Vic stands up and tries to intercept her as she paces. She ducks around him and pulls at her cropped hair with a few fingers. Vic hears a _thump-thump_ outside, the distinctive sound of Marcus’ heavy footsteps.

Marcus barges in, stopping when he sees Carla.

“There you are,” he rumbles. Carla takes notice and rushes over to him. “Someone said you were upset-”

“Where’s Lenny?” Carla yells, apparently unaware of her volume level. He grabs her arm, but she shakes him off. “What _happened_? Where is he?”

“Carla, nothing happened,” Marcus tries to reassure, making sure she’s looking down at her Pip-Boy. “I think he just went somewhere this morning.”

“And you _let_ him?” She shrieks, tears pooling in her eyes. “What the _fuck_ is wrong with you?” She takes a big shuddering breath, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. Vic puts a hand on her shoulder, but she shoves him back. Marcus looks bewildered, unsure of why this is such a big deal.

“Just sit down,” he tries to grab her shoulders, but she throws her Pip-Boy down and swats him away. “Calm down, I’m sure he’s fine.” He knows she can’t hear him, too caught up in panic to realize how irrational she was being. Were all humans like this, or was this just a _Carla_ thing?

“Len,” she cries, voice cracking, then the rest of her words are empty and silent. Her mouth is forming words, but no sound is coming out. Marcus thinks she’s pleading, or screaming something, or just soundlessly babbling nonsense.

Thankfully, before the situation gets even worse, the door opens and Lenny walks in.

He freezes and looks at the scene in front of him: Marcus and Vic unsuccessfully trying to soothe his best friend, who’s clearly having a panic attack about something. Marcus visibly looks over, drawing Carla’s eyes to him.

“A-ah!” Lenny stumbles back, suddenly burdened with an armful of Carla, who clutches the back of his shirt and buries her head in his shoulder. He wraps one arm around her waist, the other one reaching up to gently stroke her hair.

Carla feels Lenny’s chest rumble, feels his heart beat strongly. He tries to loosen his grip and pull away, but she doesn’t let that happen. Not yet, not when everything was so close to crashing down around her. She just squeezes him tighter, focusing on the unnatural warmth of his body and the rise and fall of his chest. _What if he was really gone?_ He guides her to sit on the floor with him, adjusting them so he’s practically in her lap. _I said no more second chances. But would I…_ She tries not to think about it, knowing that the question would keep her up at night. _What would I have done?_

They stay like that, practically melded together, until Carla finally forces herself to let go. She takes a deep breath and takes her Pip-Boy from his hands. She looks up and notices that they’re alone.

“C-Carla,” Lenny reaches up and wipes a few tears from her cheek. “What h-happened?”

“Nothing,” her voice is so weak and hoarse, but Lenny’s concerned frown lets her know he heard. “I just,” she lowers her eyes and sniffs, “where _were_ you?”

“W-What?” Lenny’s eyes widen in surprise. “All this was just about me n-not being there?” She nods. _When he says it like that, it doesn’t seem like a big deal. It’s more than that._ “C-Carla, I just went up to the w-woods to look for h-herbs and stuff. I was gone for a couple of h-hours.”

“But you didn’t tell me you had left!” Carla snaps, feeling a sudden surge of helpless anger. Lenny leans back to properly look at her, surprised by the sudden mood shift. “I thought-I wasn’t sure,” she rubs her eyes and hates how young she feels, “I thought you were _dead_ , Len.”

He just stares at her, wide-eyed and confused. He was gone for a few hours and she had jumped to the conclusion that he had probably _died_? And then had apparently torn up the whole village looking for him until she broke down in tears? The thought hits him suddenly: _Something’s wrong here. Something happened to her, something that I don’t know about. That nobody knows about._

He wants to ask, wants to try and figure out the delicate puzzle that Carla’s become, but now’s not the time. Not when she’s still shaking in his arms, muttering something indecipherable under her breath, tears still dripping from her eyes once in a while.

He pulls her up and over to their bedroom to lay next to him, an implicit invitation to take a nap. She quickly passes out like that, while he stays awake and wonders.

* * *

Carla feels the change in the air even before she looks out one of the glassless windows. Rain pours down in sheets, splashing on the muddy ground. She stares out the window at the silent storm. _To see this and not hear it…It’s like I’m underground. I can still feel the rain though._

She turns back towards her room to get dressed and feels a climbing itch in her nonexistent left arm. _Ugh. I forgot what this weather does._ She sighs and tries to ignore the phantom pain, the off-putting feeling of burning in fingertips that weren’t there. But it follows her all day, resurfacing every few hours.

Rainy days were never good ones.

* * *

That year, the first caravans start coming. For the first few months, they come from Klamath, from the Den. Then ones from as far south as the NCR arrive. The merchants bring information and goods, excited to meet the famed Chosen One. Carla indulges them by personally meeting them at the village gates, shaking everyone’s hand and helping set up tents for them to stay the night.

They tell of Enclave vertibirds fleeing east, of the Brotherhood base in the Den militarizing and supporting the locals in shoring up their defenses. They bring mail too, letters and packages, gifts of food or jewelry or money in exchange for long-forgotten favors. A basket of fresh apples from Modoc as thanks for healing their Brahmin, a barely-scratched wristwatch from Eric in Broken Hills for helping improve their reactor, a child’s drawing from the NCR.

There’s some more personal gifts in there too, ones that she laughs in delight at. Smitty sends her a custom license plate for the Highwayman that says ARROYO, the Wright family in New Reno sends her a fur coat, and John Cassidy in Vault City gives her a live Brahmin. She names it Joanne.

Then she receives a letter from Mayor Harold in Gecko, addressed to both her and Lenny. It reads,

_Lenny and Carla,_

_I heard all about your wacked-up adventure!_

_You did so much for us by fixing our power plant, I hate to ask you to do even more. But things are desperate and I’m not sure how much time we have left._

Then he explains the situation.

Carla, seething, immediately rifles through her desk and pulls out a sheet of paper and a pen, shoving them into Lenny’s hands.

He looks worried, eyes wide and anxious. Gecko was his home for years, the only place that would accept him. If something happened to the ghouls there…

“Write to Harold,” Carla sits down at the desk and pulls out another sheet of paper. “Tell him I’ll take care of it.” Then she slams a paperweight on the left side of the paper, picks up a pen, and starts to write.

_Dear First Citizen Joanne Lynette,_

_Go fuck yourself._

She crumples that paper up and throws it at the wall.

_First Citizen Lynette,_

_With the utmost respect, I would like to cordially inform you that if you seriously intend on menacing the town of Gecko, you can go fuck yourself._

* * *

Sometimes, she still wonders if it was worth it. If everything she did, all that she sacrificed, was worth this.

When she’s shaking from nightmares of Frank Horrigan, she doubts. When she stands stone-faced in front of the Elder’s funeral pyre, she can’t even join in the ritualistic mourning song. When Sulik comes down with a high fever and collapses in front of her, she hates herself for not catching him in time to prevent a concussion too. She bans the use of energy weapons. When she screams in the middle of the night, her neighbors don’t wake anymore.

But sometimes she’s sure that she made the right choice.

Vault City sends her a letter filled with thinly veiled distaste, but acknowledging that Gecko is under her protection. Carla helps put the finishing touches on a solar energy generator. They lug out a projector and a small collection of holodisks scavenged from a trip to Vault 13. She sits with the children in the village and giggles at an old ridiculous cartoon. The caravans draw the attention of raiders, but with the modifications Vic made to allow her to reload her weapons, they don’t stand a chance.

A dog wanders into the village one day. Carla immediately recognizes it as Dogmeat, who she hadn’t seen in dozens of cycles. He barks and licks her face, putting his filthy paws on her bare shoulders, almost knocking her over.

She keeps training in the early morning. Goris hides away for hours, then presents her with a flower crown. One day, she forces herself to sleep in past dawn, and Lenny brings her breakfast in bed. She turns twenty-six years old ( _one hundred years_ ).

It’s all over now, and she earned her happy ending. It’s not perfect, but it’s good enough for her.

And she never thinks about second chances.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An epilogue? Even I'm surprised!

**Author's Note:**

> The 'canon' timeline is going to be squished down a little so that everything fits neatly in one year. 
> 
> Come find me on [Tumblr.](https://owlaholic68.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Now with a [moodboard.](https://owlaholic68.tumblr.com/post/163484733224/if-at-first-you-dont-succeed-try-try-again)
> 
> [@Leona-florianova](http://leona-florianova.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr drew this [art of Carla!](http://leona-florianova.tumblr.com/post/166177745083/owlaholic68-s-chosen-one-carla-okay-i-drew-this)


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